Media Matter: Introduction

in Comas Rubí, Francisca; Priem, Karin; González Gómez, Sara (Eds.) Media Matter: Images as Presenters, Mediators, and Means of Observation (2021)

Media Technologies for a Better World: UNESCO’s Ethical Framework for Communication Infrastructures and Uses of Media after the Second World War

in Atanasiu, Vlad; Chachereau, Nicolas; Enrico, Natale (Eds.) et al Framing Communication Infrastructures (1950-2020): Discours et imaginaires – Diskurse und Vorstellungen (2021)

The paper looks at a global, non-commercial organization that not only steered worldwide innovation in communication infrastructure but also made efforts to define ethical standards for media use and mass ... [more ▼]

The paper looks at a global, non-commercial organization that not only steered worldwide innovation in communication infrastructure but also made efforts to define ethical standards for media use and mass communication. Established after the Second World War, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) ran campaigns in the late 1940s to remove information barriers and foster the free flow of information throughout the world. Against a backdrop of emerging conflicts between East and West, North and South, UNESCO promoted the free and global spread of ideas “by word and image,” by developing its press, broadcasting and film services, advocating for the improvement of technological infrastructures (e.g. the worldwide allocation of high frequencies), helping to remove economic obstacles to global trade in news and other media (e.g. by advocating for tariff reductions on educational, scientific and cultural materials), and renegotiating telephone regulations. While critics accused UNESCO of using its media policies to promote Western values and ideas during the Cold War, UNESCO saw its role in the context of the fight for human rights, especially the right to freedom of information and the right to education. UNESCO thus mobilized mass communication policies in the service of what the organization defined as an egalitarian vision that was intended to become a major wellspring of innovation. [less ▲]

Appearances Matter: The Visual in Educational History

Book published by De Gruyter - Appearances: Studies in Visual Research (2021)

The visual turn recovers new pasts. With a focus on education, this book seeks to present a body of reflections that question a certain historicism. It renovates historiographical debate about how to ... [more ▼]

The visual turn recovers new pasts. With a focus on education, this book seeks to present a body of reflections that question a certain historicism. It renovates historiographical debate about how to conceptualize visual media while presenting new themes and methods for researchers. Images are interrogated as part of régimes of the visible, of a history of visual technologies and visual practices. Considering the socio-material quality of the image, the analysis moves away from the use of images as mere illustrations of written arguments, and seriously questions the life and death of artifacts – that is, their particular historicity. Questioning the visual and material evidence in this ways means considering how, when, and in which régime of the visible it has come to be considered as a source, and what this means for the questions contemporary researchers may ask. [less ▲]

Media Matter: Images as Presenters, Mediators, and Means of Observation

Book published by De Gruyter (2021)

Lauenstein im Bild. Über das Edieren von Geschichte und Erinnerung in historischen Alben

in Werner, Meike (Ed.) Ein Gipfel für Morgen. Kontroversen 1917/18 um die Neuordnung Deutschlands auf Burg Lauenstein (2021)

Book review: Marguerite Figeac-Monthus (Hg.), Éducation et culture matérielle en France et en Europe du XVIe siècle à nos jours (Didactiques des lettres et des cultures, 5), Paris 2018.

in Francia-Recensio (2020), 2

Images of Industrial Life and Vocational Training: Scouting as a Liminal Space for Educating a Workers’ Elite in 1920s Luxembourg

in History of Education (2019)

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper ... [more ▼]

This paper looks at a specific set of corporate images, namely photographs of apprentices of the Luxembourg steel conglomerate ARBED, and analyzes how young workers are depicted in these images. The paper draws on a collection of 2,251 glass plate negatives (re)presenting ARBED’s industrial cosmos, including its vocational school the Institut Emile Metz. The roughly 160 images of apprentices contained in the collection put on display the apprentices’ bodies and a variety of activities in different contexts. The images’ contents testify to the institute’s programmatic hybridity and the constant (re-)mix of formal and semi-formal learning activities intended to educate natural, urban, mobile and communal men and future workers. Our focus is on Boy Scouts activities in a variety of different environments, which have functioned as a liminal space for educating a workers’ elite, mitigating the risks of industrialization and fostering social harmony and cultural belonging. [less ▲]

David Seymour’s Album on the Fight Against Illiteracy in Calabria as a Tool of Mediatization: Material Traces of Editing and Visual Storytelling

in Hendel, Giovanna; Naggar, Carole; Priem, Karin (Eds.) They Did not Stop at Eboli: The UNESCO Campaign Against Illiteracy in Reportages by David Seymour and Carlo Levi (1950) (2019)

They Did not Stop at Eboli: The UNESCO Campaign Against Illiteracy in Reportages by David Seymour and Carlo Levi (1950)

Book published by De Gruyter - Appearances: Studies in Visual Research (2019)

The analysis of UNESCO’s audio-visual archives for their digitization has brought to light a forgotten album of 38 contact sheets and accompanying texts by Magnum photographer, David “Chim” Seymour – a ... [more ▼]

The analysis of UNESCO’s audio-visual archives for their digitization has brought to light a forgotten album of 38 contact sheets and accompanying texts by Magnum photographer, David “Chim” Seymour – a reportage made in 1950 for UNESCO on the fight against illiteracy in Italy’s southern region of Calabria. A number of his photographs appeared in the March 1952 issue of UNESCO Courier in an article written by Carlo Levi, who had gained worldwide fame with his novel Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945). [less ▲]

Introduction

in Priem, Karin; Herman, Frederik (Eds.) Fabricating Modern Societies: Education, Bodies and Minds in the Age of Steel (2019)